WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama tried to have it both ways Tuesday with an election-year budget that paid faint lip service to reducing federal deficits, then piled on about $1 trillion in tax increases and hundreds of billions in higher spending designed to appeal to economically squeezed voters rather than congressional foes of red ink.

Few, if any, of the president’s proposals are likely to be enacted into law before next fall’s elections. But that’s not the point.

The objective is political rather than legislative – a book-length compendium of proposals meant to give Democratic congressional candidates a campaign platform at a time when economic disparity is a major concern for millions trying to dig out from the worst recession in decades.

Last year’s deficit-cutting proposals “remain on the table,” says the budget, referring ever so gingerly to recommended cuts in the growth of Social Security benefits. Asserting the “Republicans’ unwillingness to negotiate a balanced long-term deficit reduction deal,” it adds the president is now turning toward “the best path to create growth and opportunity for all Americans.”

Shifting priorities means a budget that never balances at any point in the next decade, lays waste to the spending caps that the White House and Congress agreed to late last year and imposes higher taxes on the wealthy to pay for more spending on programs that benefit those further down the income ladder. Education, job training, child care, transportation, tax breaks for lower-income millions of Americans and more would receive increased funding.

The White House refers to this approach as “the best path to create growth and opportunity for all Americans.”

Republicans call it something different.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, said Obama “has once again opted for the political stunt – for a budget that’s more about firing up the president’s base in an election year than about solving the nation’s biggest and most persistent long-term challenges.”

By that, he means the growth of benefit programs and federal deficits.

Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., the chairman of the House Budget Committee, has already let it be known he is looking at changes to the welfare system. Coincidentally or not, that was the area on which congressional Republicans and former President Bill Clinton ultimately reached a major compromise almost two decades ago.

For now, Democrats are no doubt ready to pounce on whatever budget Republicans produce. The theory is that if the GOP indeed comes up with a serious no-tax-increase attack on deficits, the inescapable result must be cuts in social programs.

Cue the campaign ads.

The budget maneuvering is unfolding eight months before the midterm elections, which historically favor the party not in control of the White House, and as the GOP looks confidently to renewing its House majority and hopes to seize control of the Senate.

Members of Obama’s party must do something to shake up the trend lines.

Enter the budget – and the contrast Democrats hope to set up with a Republican alternative. That would be far better, in their view, than an election that is a referendum on the slow recovery from the deepest recession in decades, Obama’s general stewardship across five years in office, the health care law and whatever else is contributing to the curdled national mood.

The polling is instructive on that point.

The most recent soundings of the public mood include a two-week-old CBS-New York Times poll that reported only 32 percent of those polled believe the country is headed in the right direction, compared with 63 percent who said it is in the wrong track.

Comments

Note: Readers can use their Facebook identity for online comments or can use Hotmail, Yahoo or AOL accounts via the "Comment using" pulldown menu. You may send a news tip or an anonymous comment directly to the reporter, click here.